High speed printers, such as inkjet, thermal, dye sublimation and dot matrix printers are used to provide vouchers, coupons, tickets, receipts and the like (all generally referred to herein as “tickets”) to consumers. For example, when a winning lottery prize becomes relatively large, the lines at ticket sales counters become long. In addition, the number of tickets purchased by each person in the line can be relatively large. Most point of sales (POS) and other transaction-based printers have been designed to issue one ticket, voucher, coupon or receipt at a time. Sales personnel are therefore required to remove each printed sheet manually from the printer. When a number of lottery or wagering tickets, for example, are purchased in a single transaction, the sales person must compile all of the tickets for that transaction by hand. This can be a time consuming procedure leading to errors being made and long delays in ticket sales.
In printers that are able to issue more than one ticket at a time, problems develop due to the commonly used roll-type paper stock used in such printers, which causes the cut tickets to curl upon being ejected from the printer. A curled ticket may block the printer's ticket exit, such that subsequent tickets may be stacked out of order or pushed out of the ticket bin.
In addition, other problems may result in a blocked ticket exit, such as an overly full ticket bin or foreign objects blocking the exit:
In such cases where the primary ticket exit becomes blocked, it would be advantageous to provide methods and apparatus for stacking multiple tickets where the tickets have an alternate exit in the event of a blockage of the primary ticket exit. Such a function would be particularly advantageous for high speed printers that dispense quantities of tickets, vouchers, receipts, coupons and other printed substrates. Such printers are often used in wagering and lottery terminals, as well as in other point of sale terminals such as those used to print train tickets, bus tickets, movie and theater tickets, retail coupons, and other substrates of value.
The present invention provides methods and apparatus for stacking tickets in a printer having the aforementioned and other advantages.